We're Not In This Alone

I want desperately to begin this some other way than the chronically overused and largely exhausted ‘November has been….a month’. But I, too, am largely exhausted and so let’s just say ‘November has been A MONTH’ and continue on from there. 

It’s lasted about ten years. It feels like it’s taken about that much off of me and the people I care about. It’s less that I didn’t expect the US election result and more that I dreaded it too much to really let the thought of it fully into my head. So instead I spent the month feeling half numb, half agonised. Desperately, wildly hating half the people around me for no worse crime than being…fine? Undaunted? Largely functioning? 

I find hope difficult. I’m your classic pessimist and I come to it naturally; my mom is cautious, my Dad’s gloom was both apocalyptic and habitual. Hate or anger or violence all feel concrete, a brick through your window, a glass at the back of your head. Hope, by comparison, is diaphanous. Flimsy. Useless. 

I did my best. I did what I could. I moved my body, I got out of the house, I wrote my angry (sometimes very angry) book, I saw my friends. The things you’re meant to do. The things you do grudgingly and without any real belief they’ll actually help.

My husban squeezes my hand two times, a silent ‘I love you’. I plan for Christmas. My son picks up more words and then more and then more. I look at my book cover. Not a member of the dnd party rolls above a ten for two hours straight and we laugh and then laugh and then laugh. I book a trip to my hometown. I get back into crafts (well, I think about it). I read more, I walk about the same. I go out in the snow. I talk to my editors. An old dream comes back to life. My sister announces a - long-awaited, miraculous, properly bring you to your knees reminder that sometimes the impossible does happen - pregnancy. 

And somewhere along the way, I find something new. 

In my love for my husband, my son, my sister, my friends is the hope they will be safe, be whole, be healthy. In my unending, exhausting work on the book is the hope it will be as good as I can make it, that people will find it, want it, that all of this will have been worth it. I take care of my body in dread that something bad will happen to it and thus express - even if I do not mean to - the hope that it will not. 

I resist, furiously, the idea that hope is not flimsy and unhelpful but expansive, enormous, infiltrating everything, everywhere. And yet grudgingly, I accept it. I see the people I care about do incredible things in the wake of oncoming darkness. And it is so easy to believe that darkness will overwhelm them. And yet I know, despite myself and all of my fear, that even if it does in the darkness too hope will be found. 

Maybe it is not much. It is something. It is the best I have. 

I am here. And that is hopeful. You are here. That brings me hope too. We are here and there is so much we can still do. And neither of us is alone. 

The Updates Section 

• I am so, so nearly done with revisions on Dreamers. My January 1st deadline is starting to loom and honestly, thank god. I don’t know how to say this in a way that’s also going to make you want to spend money on this book but; I love Dreamers. I think it’s very, very good. It’s also been my entire life for a long, long time and I’m just very excited to write something new (and also to just…not write anything for a couple of weeks). I’m so tired and run down that I have an eye infection that won’t go away and also I’m very, very, very happy. And very proud. They’re all existing as one at the moment! 

• Fun fact: on top of all my indie writing  I have also been working in the background on pursuing traditional publishing with my YA work. I sent out some test queries in the summer before realising my head wasn’t in the right space for it and am now picking things back up. My book is YA SciFi which isn’t exactly the most profoundly marketable genre but it is also my favourite thing I’ve ever written, so I guess we’re giving it a go! I’ll be starting to talk about it more I think but for now, I’m taking a leaf out of my lovely pal Sarah Hawthorne’s book and trying to focus on how many queries I can send instead of any other result. So that leaves us for this month with; 11 queries sent out of 100.
  
• You may have seen on Instagram but as a response to US election I am establishing a grant to support indie authors from marginalised communities.  There’s a lot to be done still to get things off for ground but for now, to learn more you can check out Indie Fight Back on my website or on Instagram, or as of tomorrow you can check out the grant’s virtual town hall, which will be accessible through the grant's linktree on Instagram, Threads and Bluesky. 
• I have seen my completed book cover! I feel like I’ve already screamed about it so much that it’s sort of becoming white noise at this point? But wow is it stunning. A reminder; starting next month I’ll be running a competition here on the newsletter. The person who correctly guesses the most features of Dreamers’ cover wins the first early ARC of the book! 
• Finally; in addition to forming Indie Fight Back  I have made a commitment that 5% of all profits from Dreamers will be donated to mutual aid funds in perpetuity (including pre orders). Three copies of the book will also be available from my website each month on a ‘pay what you can’ scheme. 

Monthly Inspirations

Books: I want to tell you to read the Burning Kingdoms books by Tasha Suri ALL THE TIME but if you’re also feeling downhearted about the rise of absolute evil fuckery in the world can I recommend you read them now? Particularly if you’re a queer woman? They are full of rage and strange magic and shocking tenderness and you will see your pain echoed back at you and you will find, after reading them, that perhaps you are braver than you thought. 10/10. Plus, the final book in the trilogy is I think out now? At least I thought it was out weeks ago when I ordered it at my fav indie and it transpires that wasn’t the case but maybe now? Finally? 

Music: like all of us I’m still on the Gracie Abrams train but just as the year has taken a turn I’ve turned toward the more painful notes of I Told You Things which is not only very underrated but also the soundtrack to everything I’ll be writing for like the next ten years, Dreamers included! 

I don’t? Believe? I have a misc. inspiration this month so in lieu of one pls have this video of the Goo Goo Dolls performing Iris in the rain for no better reason than a lot of my work is me connecting with my younger self and my younger self, as a 2000s kid, LOVED the Goo Goo Dolls and thought the best looking a man could possibly be is being good looking while long haired, sad and preferably damp. Don’t ask why! Just know that I stand by it. 

Bonus content: 

I know we're a year out from the end of the year but since, again, next month’s bonus content will be the first round of the early arc contest I wanted to take a moment to shoutout my most anticipated reads of 2025. It’s going to be one hell of a year but smart people with big hearts are bringing beautiful work out into the world and that’s something to take heart in, for sure. I’m most looking forward to: 

Hollow by Taylor Grothe

The Faceless Things We Adore by Hester Steel

Fable by Ava Reid

Eat The Ones You Love by Sarah Maria Griffin

PSI3 (Title tba) by Amy Clarkin

A Fate Worse Than Drowning by Sarah L. Hawthorne 

Cursebound by Sarah El Arifi 

Knight Book (title tba) by Tasha Suri 

And probably about a dozen others! It’s going to be a hell of a year folks, I won’t lie! 

But for now; up with hope, holding one another up and me finally finishing revisions. Down with facism and eye infections and doom. 

Take care of yourselves, 

Clarey